


empty spaces

by ignitesthestars



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Family, Family Drama, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 12:25:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7508220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaina Solo hunts Kylo Ren down after the death of their father and brother.<br/>-<br/>She casts her senses through the Force, a rough, grasping gesture. There’s no need for elegance or subtlety, and that’s never been her strong point anyway. He knows she’s here.</p><p> He knows she’s coming for him.</p><p> The sand scours her skin. She can feel it in her teeth, in her bones. They’re far from any kind of civilisation, anyone who could be hurt, or worse - intervene. </p><p>This is where they began, all of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	empty spaces

There is a gaping void in Jaina where her family used to be.

She had held on the longest. Far past the point when the others had given up, when her parents had drifted apart, when Jacen had turned his focus to Luke and the far reaches of the galaxy and the Force.

_Her twin’s face is pensive as he tips his face up to the sky, tracing stars with eyes that used to look the same as hers did in the mirror. “What if...he’s too far gone, Jaina?”_

_She wonders, dumbly, if he won’t look at her because she knows she won’t recognise him. She shoves him in the shoulder. It barely jostles him so she hits him again, harder this time, the heat of anger licking at her insides._

_“He’s our_ brother _,” she snaps. “There’s nowhere he can go that I can’t go after him.”_

She should have known then. That the severing would come. She had lived a life of _we_ with Jacen, but Ben had shattered them before--

Jaina sucks in a sharp gasp, the Tatooine air acrid in the back of her throat. She shoves it all away - the thoughts, the memories. Scrapes at the residual feeling lining her chest until she’s only jagged edges inside. There is a gaping void in Jaina where her family used to be, and it is filling with the same thing that tore it apart.

It’s what keeps her going. And she has to keep going, because if she doesn’t, if she stops, she will lie down. And she will not get back up again.

She casts her senses through the Force, a rough, grasping gesture. There’s no need for elegance or subtlety, and that’s never been her strong point anyway. He knows she’s here.

He knows she’s coming for him.

The sand scours her skin. She can feel it in her teeth, in her bones. They’re far from any kind of civilisation, anyone who could be hurt, or worse - intervene. 

This is where they began, all of them.

 _There_. A ripple, a shudder in the Force. The broken apart presence of her youngest brother (o n l y brother) staggering towards her. Jaina feels her lips peel back, a grin or a grimace or some other rictus of grief. His hands are empty. She ignites her lightsaber.

“Jaina,” he starts, but she doesn’t care what he has to say. She has chased him for years, begging to speak. She’s done talking.

She throws herself at him. And of course his hands don’t stay empty, because her brother is selfish and her brother is scared. She can feel it trembling through every inch of him as he brings his lightsaber up against her, fending her off with the lightsaber _she helped him build_.

_“Hey.” Her shoulder knocks his doorframe, because she hadn’t bothered to. Ben spends too much of his time closed off from them all these days. It’s her prerogative as an older sister to disturb him when he’s least expecting it. “That thing’s going to explode one day, and you’re going to have to explain to Tenel Ka why you didn’t learn the lesson she paid for.”_

_Bent over his workshop, he doesn’t look up at her for a long moment. Doesn’t even turn around. And Jaina can feel...something, curling in the air between them. The thing that makes their mother’s forehead pinch with worry. The thing that makes their uncle take him out for long walks in the jungle that never help._

_The thing that makes their father take longer and longer trips on the Falcon._

_And then he’s pivoting, scowling at her. “That’s what the vents are for. Obviously.”_

_She snorts, pushing herself off the doorframe, sauntering into the room. She is eighteen years old and the whole damn galaxy is at her fingertips. “That’s a patch fix, and you know it. Don’t be sloppy, Ben.”_

He’s sloppy now. There’s a brutality in his movements, but it doesn’t come close to hers. Jaina’s anger has forged her into something new, force and precision in the same slamming movement. He might be bigger than her, taller (and she remembers him crowing the first time his line on the _Falcon_ soared past hers), but he is all agony and confusion.

Like he has any right to it.

Like he hasn’t carved her up and scooped out her insides. There is a gaping void in Jaina where her family used to be, and her family is the one who put it there.

“I don’t--” His face, sweat-slicked and scarred, screws up like he’s trying to remember how words work. There’s desperation there, too. Rey should have hit harder. Han would still be gone, which is still unforgivable, but Jacen--

_Jacen--_

The violet glow of her lightsaber snakes under his guard. He cries out as the smell of burning flesh overtakes the Tatooine stink, a curl of steam rising from his shoulder. His hip. His ribs.

She chips away at the edges of him.

“--want to--”

Jaina yells wordlessly, the sound raw in her throat. The rage and the pain take over the empty places in her, and she disarms him with one violent slash that he fails completely to block. A tear opens up in his glove, in the skin under it. The black hilt of his own weapon stabs into the sand, and he has no time to reach for it because she’s on him.

He’s bigger than her, taller than her, but she has fifteen years of lost hope to drive her. She gives up on lightsaber combat entirely, shoving him in the sand with the Force and her own body weight. They crash to ground together, roll, and when she comes up on top she cracks him in the side of the head with her lightsaber.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Blood blooms over his teeth. There is a gaping void in Jaina where her family used to be, and it turns itself inside out now. The rage and the hate and the pain crackle out of her, sears out of her veins and into his. Blood dribbles from his nose as well as she shocks him, as she pours _loss_ into him, and he stares back up at her, wide-eyed and agonised over the top of clenched teeth.

_“It hurts, Jaina.” His face is tear streaked and small. He’s shorter than her still, although old enough not to hold his arms out for a hug._

_She gives him one anyway, stooping. “What hurts, Ben?”_

_“The voice.”_

_It’s not the first time he’s mentioned the voice. And a part of Jaina thinks she should tell her parents, but the rest of her knows that she can handle this herself. She knows how worried they are about Ben. She knows they talk about sending him away._

_She’s his big sister._

_“Shh.” She strokes his mop of curls back from his forehead like she remembers Leia doing. “It’s okay. I’ll take it from here, don’t worry.”_

“--kill you,” he whispers.

“ _Then why are you here?”_ The words tear themselves out of her, and Jaina is not empty at all. She is an open wound, all of her, and her youngest brother (only brother) gazes up at her with eyes that are shadowed in pain and begging for death.

He wants to die.

He wants her to kill him.

For one breathless moment, she just looks down at him. Lightsaber bloody, breath coming hard in her chest.

And then she stands.

“Jaina.” He coughs.

And walks.

“ _Jaina!_ ”

Away.


End file.
